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GENEVA, February 6 / TASS /. The number of COVID-19 vaccines has now exceeded the number of reported cases since the start of the pandemic, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
“Globally, the number of vaccines has exceeded the number of reported infections,” he said. “In a sense, this is good news and a remarkable achievement in such a short period of time. But more than three-quarters of those vaccines are found in just 10 countries that account for almost 60% of global GDP.”
In this regard, Ghebreyesus called on countries that have already vaccinated their high-risk groups, such as health workers and the elderly, to “share vaccines” with other states. In his words, this measure would be “the best way to protect the rest of his own population.”
“The longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunities we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,” he said, adding that nearly 130 countries, home to 2.5 billion people in all, have not yet administered a dose of a vaccine.
He called for “a massive increase in production” of COVID-19 vaccines. In his view, pharmaceutical companies around the world should help each other by providing access to their manufacturing infrastructure to support such production. He also asked companies to issue non-exclusive licenses to allow other producers to manufacture their vaccine, similar to the mechanism previously used for drugs to treat HIV and hepatitis C.
“This knowledge and data sharing could enable immediate use of untapped production capacity and help build additional manufacturing bases, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America,” he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin that at 7:00 p.m. Moscow time on February 5, up to 104,370,550 cases of new coronavirus and 2,271,180 deaths associated with the coronavirus had been registered worldwide. The number of confirmed cases increased by 355,041 in the last 24 hours and the number of deaths increased by 10,422.
